Featured Post

the blue book is now available on amazon

Exciting news!   The Blue Book is now available on Amazon! And not only that, but it also has a bunch of new content!  I've been work...

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

the soil of your soul, day 2

Come to Stillness:
Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer
Father,
     Allow the soil of my soul to be a place that is fertile and receptive to all that you desire to plant in my heart. Tend it carefully and nurture all that has sprung up in me that is of you; that I may be a garden of your delight. Through Jesus. Amen. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 65

Scripture for the Day: Mark 4:26-29

Reading for Reflection:

     Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.  For just as the winds carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.  Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these can not spring up anywhere except in the good soil of liberty and desire.
     The mind that is the prisoner of its own pleasure and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of a higher pleasure and a supernatural desire.
     For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and opposite desire?  God will not plant His liberty in me because I am a prisoner and I do not even desire to be free.  I love my captivity and I lock myself in the desire for things that I hate, and I have hardened my heart against true love. (Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: You Have Redeemed My Soul

You have redeemed my soul from the pit of emptiness
You have redeemed my soul from death (Repeat)

I was a hungry child, a dried up river.
I was a burned out forest
And no one could do anything for me
But you put food in my body, water in my dry bed
And to my blackened branches
You brought springtime green and a new life
And nothing is impossible for you


Closing Prayer:
Grow your good grace in me O God. Make me receptive to the ways that you water and tend this garden of my heart. Prune me where I need pruning, nurture me where I need nurturing, weed me where I need weeding, and care for me tenderly where I need your tender care. I love you, O Gardner of my soul. In the tenderness of Jesus. Amen. (JLB)

No comments:

Post a Comment